| The Willoughbys | 
 enlarge | Author: Lois Lowry
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin/Walter Lorraine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $7.90
You Save: $8.10 (51%)
New (42) Used (9) Collectible (1) from $7.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 3067
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0618979743
EAN: 9780618979745
ASIN: 0618979743
Publication Date: March 31, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW COPY, NO UGLY REMAINDER MARKS.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Delightful and Somewhat "Nefarious" Parody May 8, 2008
After listening to the CD edition of this book, I realized I would have to get the hard copy to really absorb the wealth of commentary. I love Ms. Lowry's satirical references to the classics and her Glossary is one of the best parts of the book. The book itself is complete with all the vintage characters: the abandoned infant, the lonely benefactor, the capable nanny, the malevolent parents, and the four idiosyncratic children. Plotting is equally "vintage" as all the subplots come together for the mandatory "happy ending." A total delight to read and a book that will be enjoyed by all ages!
lots of fun April 19, 2008
I ordered this book as an afterthought while I was picking up The Giver box set. I am so glad that I did. While at first, it felt like a rip off of Lemony Snicket. I soon found myself laughing out loud and no longer cared where she found her inspiration. This book is downright funny and truly fun to read.
 Enjoyable for parents to read to young kids April 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
My daughters, ages 9 and 7-1/2, enjoyed this book a lot. It's a pretty quick read and is completely tongue-in-cheek. If your kids have a fair sense of reality versus falsehood, then the fact that the kids in this story are actually *trying* to become orphans will not be lost of them. The story's definitely a satire and will be over the heads of some young ones, but I had a great time dressing up the dialogue with specific voices for each character.
The characters of the children in the story are very sheltered and have their basis for reality in the books they've read, most of which are recognizable literary works that even some young ones will pick up on. As the book lays out a bit of foreshadowing, I found it a great opportunity to ask my kids what they predicted would happen later in the book and therefore force them to draw conclusions (Yeah...I have to make it more than just fun but educational, too). There were some parts that I had to read multiple times due to my children's laughter. Keep in mind that the humor can be dark at times; after all, the children are attempting to see to their parent's demise while they are off on a vacation.
The book was supplemented with a glossary at the end of words the author thought kids might ask about. In all, this wasn't like the typical book we read at night about wizards, little houses on the prairies, or kids in school. However, it was a delightful departure from those.
A literary friend does it again! March 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lois Lowry has done it again. In a very different approach to story-telling...that being parody, which she handles with tongue very firmly embedded in cheek...Lois has created a book that kids are going to love reading. Very different in approach to, say, her two Newberry winners, she uses her sense of humor, her sarcasm, her take on "children in peril" stories of long ago, and simply delights with a story that's a pleasure to read.
My first contact with Lois Lowry was way back in l986 when, on first sharing several of her books with my fifth grade class, I wrote to her, expressing my good fortune in discovering her books and the fun I had reading them to my kids. She responded to my letter and has done likewise over the years as I established a rapport with not only an author of increasing note (her Newberry Awards were not too distant in the future) but with a friend.
Lois has always provided the children for whom she writes the opportunity for a most worthwhile reading experience. It's obvious, in books from the "Anastasia" series to books in the vein of "The Giver" or "Number the Stars," that she has great respect for the youngsters who become her audience. The release of a new book is something, then, for them to eagerly anticipate...and "The Willouby's" is no exception. From start to finish, readers delight in what is not only a "parody" but a story that will have readers eager to read to book's end to see just how this parody will be handled and story resolved. Kids, parody aside, will be anxious to read to book's end to see just what becomes of these children, abandoned by their parents, left in the care of a nanny, making their way into the care of a recluse candy maker, he whose life is radically altered by actions taken by the original four children, eager to dispose of a baby they find on their own doorstep. Parody of stories of old? Yes. But also a story that one eagerly reads for its "happy ending." And might there be any youngster who won't feel that the wonderful glossary at the end of the book is "icing on the cake?" And might readers not fully familiar with the stories and authors of old mentioned through Lois' book be prompted to perhaps pick up "Little Women," "The Secret Garden," and the like and enjoy stories of other children who have been part of "children's literature" for years and years? Yes, Lois' book is a parody, but children love reading of other children, and it will be the lucky youngster who chooses to make him or herself familiar with these characters from "stories of old." Hence, Lois' "bibliography" of sorts at book's end, where these classic stories are all listed, along with a brief description of each book's content, author, date published.
Whether you're a teacher anxious to see Lois' new book as part of your school's library of books or added to a classroom's reading list for both enjoyment of reading but, just as important, discussion of the book's elements; whether you're a parent, anxious to find just the perfect book for a youngster as a gift, Lois, as well as so many other fine writers of books for younger readers, will not disappoint. Move from her latest offering to the other books she's written...especially if this is a first introduction of the author to you and your child or the children in your classroom. I always told my kids, when I taught and read, over the years, oh, so many books to them (for their enjoyment AND mine), some of the best literature created over these many years has been written for THEM. Kids can be quite discerning; it's the fortunate parent or teacher who can guide them into an appreciation of just what's out there to be read and enjoyed. There's a veritable treasure to be found!
Richie's Picks: THE WILLOUGHBYS March 18, 2008
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
"Their mother, frowning, opened the door at the end of the long hall. She emerged from the kitchen. 'Whatever is that noise?' she asked. 'I am trying to remember the ingredients for meat loaf and I cannot hear myself think.'
"'Oh, someone has left a beastly baby on our front steps,' Tim told her.
"'My goodness, we don't want a baby!' their mother said, coming forward to take a look. 'I don't like the feel of this at all.'
"'I'd like to keep it,' Jane said in a small voice. 'I think it's cute.'
"'No, it's not cute,' Barnaby A said, looking down at it.
"'Not cute at all,' Barnaby B agreed.
"'It has curls,' Jane pointed out.
"Their mother peered at the baby and then reached toward the basket of beige knitting that she kept on a hall table. She removed a small pair of gold-plated scissors and snipped them open and closed several times, thoughtfully. Then she leaned over the basket and used the scissors.
"'Now it doesn't have curls,' she pointed out, and put the scissors away.
"Jane stared at the baby. Suddenly it stopped crying and stared back at her with wide eyes. 'Oh dear, it isn't cute without curls,' Jane said. 'I guess I don't want it anymore.'"
At the conclusion of THE WILLOUGHBYS, author Lois Lowry provides an annotated bibliography of thirteen "books of the past that are heavy on piteous but appealing orphans, ill-tempered and stingy relatives, magnanimous benefactors, and transformations wrought by winsome children." These thirteen books possess an average publication date of 1913. Lowry aludes to and parodies them to great effect in this mischievous tale of four parentally-challenged siblings who seek to become orphans and end up in the care of a nanny when they succeed in their scheme to hook up their parents with an extended and danger-filled itinerary from the Reprehensible Travel Agency. A second story line that repeatedly merges with the first involves the wealthy benefactor on whose rotted front porch the four Willoughby children have deposited the basket containing that now curl-less baby who had been first dumped on their own front steps:
"Squalor has nothing to do with money. Squalor happens when people are sad. And Commander Melanoff was very sad.
"He had made a vast fortune by manufacturing candy bars. His factory still existed, and the money kept coming in because people bought his hugely successful confections by the millions. But Commander Melanoff never went to his office anymore. He stayed in his squalorous mansion, where he moped and sulked.
"He scowled as he ate his stale toast each morning, and he whimpered into his unheated canned soup at lunch. Each evening he dropped tears onto the pizza that was delivered to his porch by prearrangement, and each night he went to bed between his unwashed sheets and sobbed into his stained pillow. His mustache, once bristly and important-looking, was now dingy from grime and stiff from dried-up nose drippings."
After finishing THE WILLOUGHBYS, I found myself contemplating why it might be that I was not in the least bit hampered in thoroughly enjoying Lowry's twisted and darkly comedic send-up of classic children's orphan/pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps/big 'ol mansion literature, by the fact that I had only ever read two of the thirteen books included in Lowry's annotated bibliography.
The answer became clearer for me when I began thinking about the Firesign Theater. Lowry's use of a pun at the conclusion of the first chapter had me recalling one of the troupe's memorable radio plays which I was turned on to back in high school. It begins like this:
ANNOUNCER: Los Angeles...He walks again by night.
NICK: (whistles)
ANNOUNCER: Out of the fog, into the smog...
NICK: (cough, cough)
ANNOUNCER: Relentlessly...ruthlessly
NICK: I wonder where Ruth is.
The reality is that just as I did not grow up reading classic children's literature, I similarly did not grow up listening to radio serials, and yet I took utter and lasting delight in hearing that genre being lampooned by the Firesign Theater on the record albums that had evolved from their Sixties radio shows in LA. (As a matter of fact, the recordings still hold up quite well -- you younger folk can check out Firesign Theater's Nick Danger on YouTube.)
Affable, auspicious, bilious, diabolical, ignominious, odious... Lowry also provides an entertaining and enlightening glossary filled with the wonderful words she uses in her tale.
"'Oh,' said Jane in an imploring voice, 'do let's wish for a helicopter-and-volcano disaster!'"
THE WILLOUGHBYS is a total blast: an exceptionally fun and quirky yarn that wildly succeeds in its parodying of children's old-fashioned literary characters from a century ago.
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